Dip - extended version
by DeansBabyBird
Summary: A little Hurt Dean, angsty Sam, recalcitrant Cas for your enjoyment. It's an extended version of a drabble I wrote some time back for the weekly E/O drabble challenge. For KKBelvis. x


**Dip - Extended Version. **

**The original drabble (I write each week in the E/O Drabble challenge) is in _italics_. KKBELVIS, a writer whose stories I love, asked for a longer version of it and this was my response. I hope you enjoy it. **

_I move quickly, resting my knee down on the bed beside him as he thrashes deliriously, moaning pitifully against the relentless burn of his fever._

_He is shaking so badly now that's it's hard to hold him in place. The mattress dips under my weight, canting him toward me and it's all I can do to stop us both tumbling to the floor._

_His blushed skin is searingly hot and the dressing, though only an hour old, is corrupt with the poison it's claws have torn into his flesh._

_I am loosing the battle._

I close my eyes and pray.

snSNsn

Of course he doesn't come and I can't understand why? How could he be so intentionally, wantonly cruel?

Fuck him! Fuck them all to Hell and back!

If it were me lying there I could understand his abandonment but it's not, it's my brother. The man who has willingly given up just about everything that means anything in his rotten little life in pursuit of their insidious ends and still it seams it's not enough. It's never enough.

Is he to die now? In agony, in this stinking little piss-hole? Is this his reward for his loyalty/ fealty/ sacrifice?

I want to scream, shout out the bastard angel's name. Shame him into showing his guilt ridden face but I hold my tongue. I will not give him the pleasure of my despair and I will not draw his absence to my brother's fading consciousness.

I will not have him remember that he was not important enough to save.

snSNsn

He's weaker now. The fever still burns, torrid and out of control and his confusion is bordering on absolute. I'm not sure he even knows who I am anymore and that is more terrifying than any of this has yet been.

If he forgets me will I, in fact, cease to be? It feels that way. Like we are so intertwined that without him my identity might just be erased from the world.

Oh and I shame for I know he would be furious to hear me say that because for him there has never been a moment when he has not believed in my worth. Even with all I have done, or failed to do, he has been constant in his regard for me.

And now, the one time he really needs me, I am impotent to redeem him.

snSNsn

I am so tired. I want to be anywhere but here, over-seeing his agony but there is nowhere I can hide. This is the only place I can be. Until it is over, one way or another and then I fear there will be nowhere for me but the insanity of grief.

He's quieter now, he doesn't thrash and cry out against the pain anymore because...well he has learned it does no good and I think he is just too broken to find the strength.

I climbed onto the bed with him some minutes...hours...a life-time ago now and I can feel him trembling against me. I have my back to the wall, literally and metaphorically and he is pulled close to my chest as I hold him in my arms. He's still incandescent with the fever its claws injected and his wound stinks. I should change the bandage but I have not the courage to listen to him beg me not to, or to hear him whimper should I force him to endure it.

So, I just hold him in my arms and rock him as we wait for the light to come.

snSNsn

I have no idea how long I slept.

Moments maybe or perhaps days?

It doesn't really matter.

Not now.

None of it matters now.

snSNsn

He came in the night. Silently, wordlessly, but he came. He didn't even wake me but for all that I know it was him.

How?

You expect me to say something profound here? Something about residual grace or auras or echo's of divinity?

Well, then you are as foolish as I, for it was none of that.

He left a note. Scribbled in pencil on an old pizza box lid he found from somewhere.

His writing is odd as often is his phraseology. Other-worldly!

The note tells me he has healed my brother. That my kin will be weak and sore because his grace is depleted and he could do only so much but that he will recover in a week or two if he rests.

I read that part maybe ten times and I have returned to it every few minutes since I woke. It is my salvation.

He also says he could not stay because he is needed on his Father's business but asks that I understand he came as soon as he could. That he will always come, no matter what, until he no longer...is. No longer exists.

I glance at the bed. My brother sleeps peacefully now. He is covered by an old, shabby but soft comforter that was not here when I fell asleep and though he is pale, he breathes steadily.

His injury, I have checked it, is not now foul and purulent, it is just a wound. A regular, fucking sore, wound that he will be a bitch about allowing to heal but with patience and care, will heal.

I look to the letter again, checking it still says what I think it says and it does and I am grateful. So unconditionally, absolutely, exhaustedly grateful that don't try and stop the tracks of wetness that trickle down my face.

He's stirring a little now, snuffling softly, trying to rejoin the land of the living.

I take one last look at the pizza-box note.

It says...'Tell him I came'.

snSNsn

His eyes open slowly and I wait for him to find focus as they flutter weakly. They are perhaps even more green than I remember them.

He half smiles, his head rolling against the pillow as his tongue licks at lips chapped and sore from days of fever.

"Hey, Dean."

I say softly and those eyes find mine.

"S...mm..."

He breathes more than speaks but in my heart it's louder than anything I have ever heard.

"You're alright."

I tell him so that he knows he is and he nods just once, the movement exhausting him entirely so that his eyes begin to close again in sleep, but he fights it.

"C...Cas?"

He whispers and I nod for him, my tears dripping against his cheek.

"Yeah..."

I smile.

"Cas was here. Go to sleep now."

And he does.

Ends.

**If you have a moment I'd love to know if you enjoyed it. **


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